Well, John Bolton didn't tell the truth on his senate disclosure form. But that won't stop President Bush from sending him to the UN. AP has the story: Bush to make the recess appointment next week.
Click here to see the letter senate Dems sent the president today arguing that Bolton's apparent dishonesty during his confirmation should disqualify him for the job.
--Josh Marshall
It never ends.
Another boondoogle Duke Cunningham (R) set up for some generous contributors, before the company they owned failed to provide the government the promised services and went belly up.
On the other hand, things could be worse. This one only cost the taxpayers $3.5 million.
The Union-Tribune's Marcus Stern, who broke the story that began Duke's downfall, has the details.
PS. Special thanks to TPM Reader MQ for bringing us the shocking, shocking news.
--Josh Marshall
Ya never call. Ya never write.
GOPUSA lamenting the fate of Karl "Lonesome By the Phone" Rove ...
If Karl Rove were a Democrat, he would be forgiven by the press and reporters would be returning to him for more juicy tidbits of information.
(ed.note: Catch, courtesy of TPM Reader DME.)
--Josh Marshall
For those of you following the news of John Bolton's "inaccurate" answers to the Senate regarding the State-CIA Niger forgeries investigation, we've just posted a couple updates over at TPMCafe. Click here to see the exact text of the questions Bolton answered "inaccurately" and here to see the letter the Senate Democrats just sent to the president about Bolton's concealing the information.
--Josh Marshall
Sore Arm Watch, from the Omaha World-Herald: "U.S. Rep. Tom Osborne, after siding with a two-vote House majority to approve a controversial trade agreement with Central American countries, said Thursday he feared the sugar industry would suffer reprisals if the pact failed. Osborne said he had heard suggestions from Bush administration officials that the industry's lack of flexibility on trade could hurt it when federal farm programs are rewritten next year."
--Josh Marshall
Scot-Free Watch, from the Rocky Mountain News: "Federal prosecutors have declined to press charges of impersonating a Secret Service agent against a White House volunteer who forcibly ousted three people from a speech by President George W. Bush in Denver on March 21. The announcement was made without explanation Friday in a letter from the Secret Service to Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette, all Democrats who had asked for the agency to investigate the incident."
--Josh Marshall
Probably most readers of this site are also Atrios readers. So this message is mainly for those who aren't or who haven't stopped by recently.
I haven't written on this. But there's a congressional candidate named Paul Hackett, a Marine corps vet of this Iraq war, who's is in a harsh, down and dirty race in Ohio's 2nd District and in the midst of getting the worst slime treatment you can imagine from the Republican machine.
By the end of it, his volunteering to serve in the war zone will probably be cast as a sign of some deep character flaw or softness on terrorism.
Like I said, I haven't been on top of this. And there's no point in my trying to reproduce everything that's already been written and linked. But if you don't know about this race, go over to Atrios' site and just scroll down looking for posts with the name 'Hackett'. And find out what's going on.
--Josh Marshall
It's amazing how the mind works.
Of all the things for John Bolton to forget about, he forgets that he was interviewed for the Joint State-CIA IG Report on the Niger forgeries.
Here's a question, though. My impression is that you don't just fill these confirmation disclosure forms out one evening in the den over a cup of tea.
I think it's a thorough process, with a team that goes over details, checks over specifics and so forth.
Presumably it was a team of people from State, though I don't know whether they were from his shop or congressional liaison or what. Bolton can't have been the only one who knew he'd been interviewed as part of that investigation, for he wasn't a minor player in the case the Inspectors General were investigating. And he certainly wasn't the only one who reviewed that form.
--Josh Marshall
The latest on the Taylor case, from the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Apparently, his voting card was 'invalid', even though it had worked for a number of other votes on the same day ...
Taylor spokeswoman Deborah Potter said Thursday that Taylor cast his vote near the end of the voting period.Potter said House members have electronic cards that allow them to vote from another location when they can’t make it to the House floor.
“At the terminal where he put his card in and voted, he voted no,” Potter said.
The machine apparently recorded Taylor’s vote as an invalid card, according to Brian Walsh, press secretary for Congressman Bob Ney. Ney’s office oversees the House Clerk’s Office.
Members of Congress receive a new voting card every Congress, and it’s not clear what the problem was with Taylor’s card.
Are they really serious about <$NoAd$> this?
--Josh Marshall
Apparently, according to the AP, the State Department is confirming Sen. Biden's claim that John Bolton failed to tell senators that he was interviewed in the joint State/CIA IG probe into the US government's use of the forged Niger papers.
Late Update: I've gotten a lot of emails about this. So I wanted to clear up a seemingly widespread confusion. In questioning today, the State Department has apparently backed up Bolton's claim that he did not testify before Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation. The reference above is to the joint State Department-CIA IG investigation from 2003. These are totally different things, though they are both related to the same underlying issue -- the Niger forgeries.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, this is pretty pitiful.
You know we've been talking all day about Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) and his claims that the House vote counting tabulation system had wrongly counted him as not voting on CAFTA when in fact he had voted "NO".
We brought you an interview with Rep. Coble (R-NC) who Taylor said he voted with as well as our fruitless efforts to confirm Taylor's story with the House Clerk's office.
Now I've just seen this AP story which follows up on the various stories of Reps who got squeezed by the leadership at the last moment for their votes. The story follows up on Taylor's statement about the mistake in the voting tabulation. And Taylor was apparently asked when he realized the mistake had occurred. According to the AP Taylor said, "This morning, after I got out of the gym."
I'm sorry. But that's ridiculous.
CAFTA was a very important vote. It was particularly important and controversial in Taylor's district, which is very hostile to free trade agreements (for the moment, we'll set aside the issue of what constitutes 'free trade', etc.). Taylor was one of the House Republicans targeted by the leadership to get pressed hard on voting for CAFTA even though it would clearly be unpopular in his district.
He gets wrongly counted as failing to cast a vote. It's publicized widely. And he only realizes something went wrong the next day when he's leaving the gym?
Is that credible?
--Josh Marshall
House Voting Machine Snafu update.
As I noted earlier, Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) put out a statement today claiming that he'd voted "NO" on CAFTA only to have the House Clerk's office make an error which led to his vote not being counted. In his statement, Taylor noted that he'd voted with fellow North Carolina Rep. Howard Coble. And we spoke to Coble at length about this this afternoon.
But Taylor also said: "The Clerk's computer logs verified that I had attempted to vote, but it did not show my 'nay'."
I've been trying since late afternoon to get confirmation of this from the House Clerk's office; and I've been told by staffers that Deputy Clerk Gerry Vans is the only person in a position to comment. But I've so far failed to get any response.
--Josh Marshall
I'm a bit unclear about this.
Rawstory has just posted a letter Sen. Biden wrote to Condi Rice alerting to her to the fact that John Bolton may have misinformed the Foreign Relations committee with respect to whether he was interviewed by the State Department IG during the course of the State Dept./CIA joint inspectors general report from 2003.
I find this a bit mystifying for a couple reasons. My recollection from last year, first of all, is that Bolton's supporters were pretty freely noting this report and claiming that it had cleared him of any wrongdoing in the Niger/Uranium matter. Secondly, does this mean that Biden's staff wasn't acquainted with the State/CIA joint report before today?
--Josh Marshall
Okay, as we discussed earlier, Rep. <$NoAd$> Charles Taylor (R-NC) has put out a statement saying that he voted "NO" on CAFTA last night but that the voting machine didn't register his vote.
In the statement he put out he seems to imply that he and Rep. Howard Coble voted "No" together on the floor.
The exact statement reads (emphasis added)...
I voted NO on the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) in the vote last night. I informed the Majority Leader and the Appropriations Chairman I was voting no, as I had informed my constituents I was voting no. Rep. Howard Coble and I voted "no" together. Due to an error, my "no" vote did not record on the voting machine. The Clerk's computer logs verified that I had attempted to vote, but it did not show my "nay". I am re-inserting my "No" vote in the record. But even with my NO vote re-inserted, the bill still passed.
I'm reprinting the exact language of the statement because I want you to evaluate for yourself just what the words are supposed to mean. But I took them to mean that Coble was in some way a witness to his vote, that they had physically went to vote at the same time, etc.
I talked a few minutes ago with Rep. Coble (R-NC) and what he told me is this.
Coble recalled that he and Taylor had spoken earlier in the day and both told each other they were going to vote "No". Both had apparently been asked by House whip Roy Blunt to wait until late in the voting, even though they planned to vote "No", and both had agreed to do so.
Later that evening, when the voting was actually underway, Coble saw Taylor on the floor and suggested that after they both voted they should both leave the chamber together, to avoid strong-arming from the leadership to change their votes -- something that did eventually happen to fellow North Carolina Congressman Robin Hayes.
After Coble eventually voted, he told me, he saw Taylor 15 to 20 feet away. Taylor said he'd just voted "No" too. After which, both left the chamber and went to Congressman Taylor's Appropriations Committee office, where they remained for roughly an hour.
During that time they watched the vote on the closed circuit House video, but without the volume on.
While this was happening, Coble's chief of staff Ed McDonald was watching on C-Span and heard Taylor's name being called off as not having voted. Realizing the problem, Coble told me, McDonald twice called Taylor's office to report the problem, but got no response -- the reason being, of course, that Coble and Taylor were in Taylor's Appropriations Committee office, watching with the volume off.
On the key question, was Coble actually with Taylor when he voted? Or did he see him vote? Apparently not.
"I didn't see him insert the card," said Coble.
When I asked Coble whether he had ever heard of such a vote tabulation error in the House, he told me he'd been in the House for twenty-one years and thought he had a recollection of its possibly having occurred once, but was not certain.
Late Update: I left messages this afternoon with Gerry Van at the House Clerk's Office to determine whether their computer records had in fact confirmed the voting snafu, as Rep. Taylor's statement claims. But I have yet to hear back from them.
(ed.note: We're discussing this evolving story in this discussion thread at TPMCafe.)
--Josh Marshall
On this matter of Rep. Charles Taylor's (R) disputed vote on CAFTA last night, it's important to make the following point. The bill passed 217-215. Taylor was first counted as not voting. His no vote would make it 217-216, which of course still means it passes.
But that doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
These sorts of high-stakes votes are highly fluid and dynamic. Either side might have a handful of members on the sidelines who won't budge if it's a two or three vote margin but will make the hard vote if the margin is down to just one.
Normally this sort of monday morning quarterbacking is just woulda, coulda, shoulda. But if Taylor's vote was really misrecorded, it's worth considering.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Charles Taylor (R) of North Carolina has just put out a statement about his claim that his "NO" vote last night on CAFTA was not recorded by the House clerk.
We've posted the statement here.
--Josh Marshall
As noted below, CAFTA won in the House last night by a mere two votes -- 217-215 -- in what has been described as unprecedented arm-twisting. Already, one Republican representative, Charles Taylor (R-NC) has claimed that, contrary to press accounts, he voted "No", only to have the House clerk "botch" his vote and record him as not voting.
If that's true, the bill passed by a single vote.
How often to votes get 'botched' by the House electronic voting system? And what more stories are yet to bubble out?
--Josh Marshall
Representative Charles Taylor (R-NC), a longtime opponent of CAFTA, is down in press reports out this morning as not casting a vote on the bill last night.
But we hear that his office is telling constituents that the House clerk "botched the vote", that he actually voted "no", and that his office is now trying to resolve the issue.
Taylor's Ashville office tells me they're about to release a statement.
(ed.note: We're discussing this over in this discussion thread at TPMCafe.)
--Josh Marshall
CAFTA because ya HAFTA?
Who will be the first to talk?
We all know what happened the last time the White House told the House GOP leadership that it had to pass a certain bill, despite significant resistance from GOP backbenchers. Lots of offers were made that couldn't be refused. And that was when out-going Rep. Nick Smith got hit with a mix of bribes and threats on the floor of the House itself.
I've been hearing from various sources that what the GOP leadership did in the House last night on CAFTA put that earlier episode to shame. Rep. Early Pomeroy (D) of North Dakota told the local paper: "I've seen the Republican leadership break arms on close votes before, but nothing quite this ugly."
I've been getting lots of stories in. But a lot of the details may well show up in local papers rather than the big national dailies. So collaborative research, as we did with Social Security and the DeLay Rule, is really the only way to get a handle on the story.
One interesting story is that of Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC): to paraphrase that lame jibe from last year, Hayes voted 'No' before he voted 'Yes'. Only literally. Says Bloomberg: "In the end a 40-minute delay in the vote was broken after the Republican leadership convinced Representative Robin Hayes of North Carolina to switch his vote to yes."
If you see articles in local media that seem to give some part of the story, let us know in this discussion thread we've just we've just set up over at TPMCafe. If you were there or have other details to share, let us know that too. And if you need to remain anonymous, you can always send a note directly to TPM at the comments email at the top of the sidebar.
--Josh Marshall
Out of the corner of my eye I've been watching this growing dispute over whether and which 'documents' about Judge Roberts the White House will turn over to the senate as part of his confirmation hearings. And quite apart from the particular documents in question, I'm wondering what the argument is, precisely, for the White House having access to any more information in the process of nominating Roberts than the Senate should have in confirming him.
It seems like a basic point of logic. Why should the senate's call be, by definition, less well-informed than the president's?
In national security appointments, there may be some genuine separation of powers issues at stake. For instance, when Condi Rice was promoted from National Security Advisor to Secretary of State. But as long as the information relates to Roberts personal finances, work history and so on, clearly none of those issues are involved.
I know it may seem like I'm being willfully dense or naive. But what's wrong with the standard of: If the White House got to see it, why not the senate?
--Josh Marshall
A very important article in tomorrow's Times. The lede: "Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show."
--Josh Marshall
I really doubt they'd have the nerve to try. But I just posted a story over at TPMCafe about how pressure may be building to can Patrick Fitzgerald as US Attorney in Chicago, with the thumb down possibly coming from Denny Hastert. It's a complicated story, with various levels of possible political maneuvering in play.
--Josh Marshall
I've mentioned a few times here that I'm not sure that Judy Miller is really in jail for things she did in her role as a journalist, at least not in the sense most of us would understand the term. Over at her blog, Arianna Huffington just posted a scenario along these lines about Miller -- one Arianna says is making rounds at the Times itself.
Not all the details are the same. But I've heard similar stuff.
Stop by and see what she says.
--Josh Marshall
Wow! ThinkProgress seems to have Tom DeLay dead-to-rights on a bit of pork-barrel shenanigans even extreme by the Hammer's standards. Seems DeLay slipped over a billion dollars of privately-administered pork for oil companies in his district into the energy bill after the bill was out of conference committee.
ThinkProgress has the details.
--Josh Marshall
Roberts and the <$NoAd$> recount, from the Miami Herald ...
U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported -- as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation's highest court, according to the man who drafted him for the job.Ted Cruz, a domestic policy advisor for President Bush and who is now Texas' solicitor general, said Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation ''lions'' and ''800-pound gorillas,'' which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys in Florida.
Until now, Gov. Jeb Bush and others involved in the election dispute could recall almost nothing of Roberts' role, except for a half-hour meeting the governor had with Roberts. Cruz said Roberts was in Tallahassee helping the Bush camp for ''a week to 10 days,'' and that his help was important, though Cruz said it is difficult to remember specifics five years after the sleep-depriving frenetic pace of the 2000 recount.
Not disqualifying perhaps. But worth knowing.
--Josh Marshall
Walter Pincus has a very good and very important piece in the Post tomorrow (with Jim VandeHei) on the Plame matter. It contains no explosive quotes or shocking revelations. The headline is that the Fitzgerald probe has a much broader scope than we've been led to believe. And there's a choice passage which, I believe, shows pretty clearly that Bob Novak knew just what he was doing when he printed Valerie Plame's name.
But the really succulent meat is reserved for the tail end of the article, which I'll quote at length ...
[Former CIA spokesman Bill] Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.Wilson unleashed a multimedia attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the president of "twisting" intelligence.
Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to have remained in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not believe Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors in the leak case, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.
On July 9, Tenet and top aides began to draft a statement over two days that ultimately said it was "a mistake" for the CIA to have permitted the 16 words about uranium to remain in Bush's speech. He said the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed."
A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.
Here we have some of the cobweb of lies, large and small, brushed back, ones the falsity of which has remained somehow unspeakable in high political debate despite all their transparency.
As Pincus and Jim VandeHei rightly say, twin attacks -- one aimed at Wilson for blowing the whistle, the other at the CIA, an elaborate fraud perpetrated upon the American people (and perpetuated through last year's SSCI report) in which the CIA, which had repeatedly tried to prevent the president from publicizing and validating the bogus Niger uranium claims, was forced to take the blame for not warning the president of their falsity. (As this ball of yarn unravels, remember the name Alan Foley.)
And all of this, of course, meant to cover up the big lie -- the administration's knowing use of bogus WMD reports to convince the country to go to war.
As Frank Rich put it so aptly less than two weeks ago, "the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke."
--Josh Marshall
Admittedly, I mentioned this before - but proprietor's privilege. You never know how these things are going to work in practice. But we've got a great exchange going at TPMCafe between Thomas Frank, Ed Kilgore, Todd Gitlin and Greg Anrig about Populism, Marxism (both crude and refined), various other isms, Tom Watson and other stuff -- all bubbling out of their discussion of Tom's book What's the Matter with Kansas. Stop by.
--Josh Marshall
Some saw it as far back as 2003. <$NoAd$>This from a July 17th 2003 piece in The New Republic ...
Democrats say Rockefeller has not served as a particularly effective counterweight to Roberts. Despite his mighty name, bank account, and six-foot-seven-inch frame, Rockefeller is a low-key figure--a senator in the old collegial mold rather than a media-savvy partisan warrior. And he's a relative newcomer to the world of spooks and secrets, having only joined the intelligence committee in 2001. Some Democrats complain that, in contrast to his predecessor, Graham, Rockefeller lacks the necessary expertise for his current role. Rockefeller himself warned as much last fall, telling Roll Call the committee's term limits were "a big mistake." "I know a lot about health care, but it took me about 10 to 12 years to learn that because it is very complicated. This is much more complicated." Sometimes Rockefeller's learning curve is evident. During a July 12 interview with National Public Radio on the Niger uranium fiasco, for instance, he incorrectly referred to Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who apparently played a key role in the episode, as a Cheney aide--a small but important distinction.More important, Democrats say Rockefeller has allowed Roberts to roll over him. For instance, in early June Rockefeller publicly threatened that, with the support of four other committee Democrats, he could force Roberts to conduct an open investigation. In fact, Rockefeller overstated his power-committee rules only allow members to force a closed meeting--but previous intelligence chairmen have generally honored such minority--party requests for broader investigations. When Roberts refused to observe that precedent, Rockefeller essentially yielded. And, although he had the power to block it, on June 20 Rockefeller signed off on Roberts's plan to hold a handful of closed hearings, with the vague promise of one open hearing in September. The news came "to the serious dismay of the caucus," says a Senate Democratic staffer. "Many in the caucus think Rockefeller is being used."
This, of course, was well before the 2004 SSCI Iraq intel report travesty.
--Josh Marshall
A pained TPM Reader checks in ...
I wouldn't expect anything different from Pat Roberts and his attempts to justify, mollify and cover-up Bush's failures, but Jay Rockefeller is clearly the tool of the man. He appears with Roberts on the news shows, and he either shills for Roberts or is totally ineffective in pointing out Roberts' efforts to cover-up. I can't be mad at a Republican for acting like a Republican, but I am upset at the ineptitude of my own man.
Too true.
--Josh Marshall
As long as we're talking about Al Gonzales' '12 hour gap', don't forget this letter from the CIA to Rep. John Conyers, which we posted a year and a half ago, in which the CIA's Director of Congressional Affairs highlights the Agency's multiple attempts to get the Ashcroft Justice Department to do something about the Plame leak.
Take a look. You can almost hear the sound of the foot dragging.
--Josh Marshall
In case you were wondering, we're going to announce the winners of our Duke Cunningham Shenanigan Worksheet contest later this week.
(Of course, the entries are slightly out of date, given this morning's revelations about Duke's attempt to lean on the Queens DA, then fixing to indict Thomas Kontogiannis on multiple felonies, in exchange for various boat and house emoluments.)
And we've just started our roundtable exchange about Tom Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas over at the TPMCafe Book Club. Greg Anrig, Todd Gitlin and Ed Kilgore have just posted their thoughts on the book and Tom will be responding later.
Also later today, help TPM with a pressing diction problem! 'Toady' and 'lickspittle' aren't doing the job for Sen. Pat Roberts, seeing as they convey shameless sycophancy, rather than a degraded willingness to do any and all of Karl Rove's dirty work. And 'hack', while appropriate in meaning, is simply too shopworn and colloquialized to serve the purpose.
Late Update: By popular demand, we've just opened a Sen. Roberts new epithet thread at TPM Cafe.
--Josh Marshall
RNC product testing a new tactic in Kentucky?
Gov. Ernie Fletcher tried to persuade Attorney General Greg Stumbo to dissolve the special grand jury investigating whether officials broke civil service hiring laws, according to a memo released yesterday.In the July 5 memo from Fletcher general counsel Jim Deckard to Stumbo, the governor agreed to "suggest that mistakes may have been made" in filling state jobs that merit laws are designed to insulate from politics.
And he would take "appropriate personnel actions" against employees found to "have exercised less than good judgment."
Deckard said yesterday that Stumbo agreed to terms of the memo during a meeting over the July 4 weekend, but Stumbo disputed that.
The memo details how Fletcher would appear before the grand jury -- not under oath and with a lawyer -- to report on "new policies" regarding the hiring of civil service workers.
But Fletcher asked that the special grand jury not issue a report detailing evidence it had reviewed, and that no future grand jury take up matters already under investigation, according to the memo.
Stumbo was out of state yesterday and did not return calls. But he said in a telephone interview Sunday that the written memo "was hogwash. I wouldn't sign it."
I guess they'd call it the McConnell <$NoAd$>plan?
--Josh Marshall
Just when you thought it was safe to go back down to the yacht basin, the Duke story returns!
I know they're hard to keep straight. But you'll remember that one of Duke's several cronies and sugar-daddies was Thomas T. Kontogiannis, the Long Island real estate developer convicted of a far-ranging kick-back, bid-rigging and bribery scheme centering on a public school district in Queens. In addition to the millions of dollars in fraudulent contracts, about 80-grand of his money also ended up finding its way into the campaign coffers of the Queens school superintendent when she unsuccessfully ran for Congress. But then, I digress.
Just to review, Kontogiannis gave Duke a) a loan at wholesale rates to buy a condo in Northern Virginia, b) a million dollar loan at the same rates to buy the new manse in Rancho Santa Fe that got Duke into all the trouble, and c) bought Duke's boat, the Kelly C, from him from at what seemed to be three or four times its market value.
Somehow or another the boat money ended up getting Duke out of paying back most of the million dollar loan. But the details escape me.
In any case, one mystery to the Kontogiannis angle has always been just what Kontogiannis got from Duke for all the free money. Remember, the standard merchandise Duke sold was the corruptly-obtained defense contract. And Kontogiannis' lines of business seemed limited to real estate and large-scale municipal corruption.
So it wasn't easy to see how these two entrepreneurs could end doing business together, though the massive skein of public corruption investigations and convictions hovering around Kontogiannis did always suggest that when there was a will there'd be a way.
Indeed, when the Post's Charles Babcock asked Kontogiannis earlier this month whether all his free goodies to Duke might constitute favors of an inappropriate sort, Kontogiannis had the Copolla-esque response: "Why would I do that? I don't need the man."
Well, it turns out Duke was in a position to do Kontogiannis a favor. He faxed a letter to the Queens DA basically suggesting that he back off and cut the K-man some slack.
Lest I be summarizing the matter too poetically, here's how Babcock describes it in his follow-up piece in tomorrow's Post ...
Cunningham wrote that it had come to his attention that the prosecutor had filed a case against Kontogiannis. The congressman wrote that there may be a political agenda against the school official by a disgruntled contractor and that Kontogiannis may have been victimized as a result. He asked Brown to contact him with any information he could provide on the case, and he thanked the prosecutor for considering his concern.Cunningham noted in the letter, the sources added, that he had filed a congressional inquiry with Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who was then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and attached a note in which a committee lawyer acknowledged receiving the inquiry and said he was looking into it.
Sam Stratman, a spokesman for Hyde, said the note "was merely a matter of courtesy to acknowledge that the committee had received [Cunningham's] request." When the committee lawyer "learned that the New York case was a potential criminal matter," Stratman said, "any inquiry would have been inappropriate. No inquires were ever made of New York officials by the chairman or his staff."
Oh, what a tangled web ...
--Josh Marshall
Late-Breaking Pat Roberts Egregious Hackery Update!
Sen. Pat Roberts (R) prevented the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from making any inquiry into the origins of the Niger forgeries. His reason was that there was an on-going FBI investigation and he didn't want to interfere in any way with that investigation.
(See the footnote on page 57 of the SSCI report or this earlier post.)
As we've noted here repeatedly, at least as of late last year the FBI investigation was really a phantom investigation, with little actual work being done to solve the mystery -- something Sen. Roberts almost certainly knew.
So it would seem that any overlap between a criminal investigation and a congressional inquiry is a big no-no to Roberts.
And yet now we hear that he plans to investigate Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation itself.
What this man won't do when Karl Rove calls.
--Josh Marshall
Good catch by Kos.
Sen. Roberts doesn't have time to investigate the manipulation of prewar intelligence, the Niger forgeries or the Plame disclosure.
But he does have time to investigate how the CIA uses 'cover' in its clandestine operations. And as part of his new exercise in water-carrying he will also investigate Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal probe.
Note the specifics: I didn't say he'll be investigating what Fitzgerald's investigating; he's apparently found time to investigate the Fitzgerald probe itself. Roberts' spokesperson Sarah Little told Reuters that his "committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years."
Can any Senate Democrat not see now that Sen. Roberts only use for his committee is as a tool to defend the political interests of the White House? And will anybody deny that the decision to investigate Fitzgerald comes down on the orders of the White House?
--Josh Marshall
ThinkProgress has a spot-on post today about Al Gonzales' excuse for giving Andy Card a twelve hour heads-up on the DOJ order to preserve White House documents relating to the Plame leak. Gonzales says that then-AG John Ashcroft or his subordinates said it was okay.
If that's true, then the proper response is certainly to tell Ashcroft that there's plenty of room in the Plame-obstruction cauldron, so jump right in. I mean, really. Rove worked on and off for Ashcroft for two decades. And he was a key player in getting Ashcroft off the unemployment line (after losing his senate seat to the then-recently-deceased Mel Carnahan) and into a new job (Attorney General).
Indeed, he eventually had to recuse himself from the case -- which is how the to-all-appearances aggressive and independent Patrick Fitzgerald ended up getting the appointment.
--Josh Marshall
We've got a new feature we're debuting this morning at TPMCafe, our TPMCafe Book Club. I hope you'll stop by and check it out.
Our first guest is Thomas Frank who will be discussing his latest book What's the Matter with Kansas.
(As you can see in the post just below, one of the biggest problems with Kansas is Sen. Pat Roberts (R). But that's another matter.)
This morning he introduces the book. That will be followed by an excerpt, an exchange with three of our regular TPMCafe contributors, and later in the week Frank will answer your questions.
So click here to stop by, comment, pick up a copy of the book and let us know what you think about our new feature.
--Josh Marshall
What a sad state we've come to.
I've told you many times how Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a shame to the office, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House political operation if there ever was one.
The July 2004 report on Iraqi WMD should be enough to make the point.
But now there's more.
Note that there are no congressional investigations into the origin of the Niger forgeries, the outing of Valerie Plame, and countless other scandals and mysteries large and small. (Remember, after the 2004 election, Roberts announced that there's now not enough time for the investigation into possible political manipulation of Iraqi WMD intel, which he promised prior to the election.)
But now there will be congressional hearings into whether the CIA does a good enough job at protecting the 'cover' of its agents in its Directorate of Operations.
It's necessary to unpack this one to see just what a lickspittle the Senator from Kansas really is.
For two years now defenders of the White House have been arguing that Valerie Wilson (nee Plame) wasn't 'outed' or damaged in any way because she wasn't really covert in the first place. The arguments have been various: she was a glorified secretary, she hadn't kept her status a secret, she hadn't been abroad recently enough, she worked at Agency headquarters, etc. etc. etc.
There's always been a ready answer to the toadies peddling these excuses. No one on the outside really knows the details of Plame's service. By definition, her superiors at the CIA do. And they wouldn't have made a criminal referral if the law didn't even apply to the person in question.
In other words, either this whole debate about her status is rendered moot by the original CIA referral to DOJ, or you must believe that the referral was knowingly fraudulent.
Those who are so Bush-true as to hypothesize that the CIA made a knowingly fraudulent referral would have to contend with the fact that the Bush Justice Department and then later Patrick Fitzgerald both concluded that the referral was a valid one.
The only other possibility -- one which I've referred to jokingly in the past -- is to argue that she wasn't covert enough. That is to say, maybe she was covert to the CIA. But she really wasn't covert up to the standards of say, Bill Safire or Tucker Carlson or Bill O'Reilly.
And this, understand, is the premise of the new Roberts' hearings. Was she really covert enough? And does the CIA really know how to define 'covert'. Asked about a bankrobber caught red-handed outside the bank, Sen. Roberts response would be to say, "But how much real claim did the bank have to that money? Did they really earn it? And what did they do to protect it?"
Now, there's a separate debate about whether the CIA, over the decades, became so bureaucratic that it came to rely too much on operatives whose cover was insufficiently deep. So, for instance, working non-proliferation with too many American 'energy industry consultants' like Plame rather than assets embedded deep within the A.Q. Khan nuke network. Presumably, the latter are rather more difficult to place than the former group. But this charge may well be a valid one. Given the nature of the question, it is difficult for those of us outside the intelligence community or without high level clearance to evaluate.
But one probably needn't advance all the way through elementary school to grasp that that policy debate is separate from a criminal investigation into whether someone broke the rules as they exist today.
The only reason Chairman Roberts now wants hearings into this question is that it might generate more fodder for excuse-making for those who will climb any mountain and ford any stream to avoid holding any of the president's lieutenants to account.
Sen. Roberts has turned the Intel Committee into an arm of Karl Rove's political operation. In the truest sense of the word, Sen. Roberts is a hack, a shame to his office.
Share your thoughts? We're discussing this in this thread at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
On CNN today, Sen. Roberts (R) said Valerie Plame couldn't be covert since she was working at CIA headquarters at the time her identity was exposed. Ex-CIAer Larry Johnson says otherwise.
--Josh Marshall
